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You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Masser and Tim Stenovek on Bloomberg Radio.
I'm Carol Master along with Matt Miller in for Tim Stenevek on Bloomberg Business Week Daily on this Monday, actually here with us for a couple of days. And this is our gift to you. We know how much you love cars.
Thank you, and the EV space, thank you.
You're welcome.
I really do you know what? I'm part of a convert now. Because I'm an old I don't have an EV yet.
I'm a gear no.
Because I'm a gearhead. I like to work on my cars myself. I like old American muscle. I like cars to be loud and smell like gasoline and vibrate a lot. But but lately I've been driving a ton of evs. I drive a new car every week for my podcast it's called Hot Pursuit with Hannah Elliott. And uh, just the acceleration, the handling has gotten so much better. There's so many more to choose from that it's not just boring. Look Tesla's with spartan interiors that it's become almost a
preferred motor transportation for me. The one problem I have still charging. The charging network is so bad.
Yeah, so we have a guest just got a front row seat to it. So let's bring them in. Josh Aviv is founder and CEO of spark Charge. He's out there in Massachusetts. Josh, good to have you here with Matt. Get ready for a grilling, because it is Matt Miller.
We're ready, We're ready.
Listen. Your company reminds us that it is the world's largest ev fleet charging network. Lay it out for us where it is, how many who's using it? Give us some size and scope.
Absolutely, so, spark Charge is the world's largest off grade evy fleet charging network. We have operations across all fifty states and recently just launched in Canada and Mexico. What makes us special is that we bring the power to the fleet. So we show up with our off gride
mobile battery chargers and mobile power hubs. We can get going without any grid connection, which means we get fleets up and running and charging and as little as three to seven days versus them having to wait as much as two to three years for infrastructure to catch up.
So you're the biggest off grid EV charging network.
What does that mean mean?
Meaning you're not the consumer chargers that are build up in malls or next to a Starbucks. You're you're working with like Ford pro kind of customers to charge their trucks. So you're working with construction fleets, with plumbers, with electricians, with anybody, with anybody who's pro fleet.
Yeah, Amazon fleets.
Like Amazon last mile delivery, rideshare fleets as well construction fleets, rental car fleets, school bus fleets. Think about the problem that consumers have where they're like, hey, I need to figure out how.
To charge one car.
Fleets have the issue of how do I charge twenty cars one hundred cars, and how do I do that every day to keep my business going? And we step in and we basically get them up and running quicker than any other electrification option on planet ear. If we can get a full fleet up and running in as little as three days fully electrified and those cars out on the road, Dude.
That is such a great business. How did you start this?
Yeah, So we started it when we realized that a lot of fleets were waiting anywhere from two to five years before the grid would catch up and allow them to electrify. And we said, well, what happens if we bring the energy to you, or if we get power set up to where we can use our batteries to get you charging almost immediately. What we realized is that
fleets still incorporate fifty cars. They'll incorporate twenty cars, but then they'll have the issue of going to the grid and saying, hey, we want to get these cars electrified, but the grid can't handle the demand of all these vehicles.
And so we show up, We get them up and go on with our mobile battery chargers, which means they're charging from a giant battery connected to charging stations, and then they're able to get up and running a lot quicker, and then they also have a smoother service.
Right, there's no such thing as.
Grid delays or power outages, especially when it's being battery backed.
All the energy is there.
Wait, so you just kind of bring a massive battery to places and that's how you do it.
Is it on eighteen wheels? How do you transport that?
Yeah, so some of them are trailer based, some of them are container based. But basically we can get that fleet set up operating off that battery and then they can begin charging from those charging stations immediately. We also have power hubs that use basically clean energy like hydrogen and things like that that can also get a fleet up and run in and quickly as well.
That's what I was gonna do. So how do you charge your battery? That's what I'm curious, like, where are you getting the power and how do you make sure it's cost efficient, especially when there's such a power grab right now with all the AI going on.
Absolutely, so we're pretty much energy agnostic. So that means that we can grab energy from solar, which a lot of times that's what we'll do. We'll swap the battery out, so we'll basically have a battery recharging from a solar partner. We'll bring it in, we'll swap it out with a resh battery, and then keep that fleet going twenty four seven three sixty five. To the fleet, it looks like limitless energy and we're managing all the power on the back end, which means they never have to worry about
downtime or any operational efficiencies. We're constantly swapping that battery out or hooking it up to solar to keep them going.
I'm normally pretty skeptical, but I was like, Wow, what a cool company, what a great idea, And now it realized he's just a great pitch man. Also, right, I didn't see until now that you got a million dollar investment from Mark Cuban and Lorie Grinder on Shark Tank. You've won various awards too, so you're great at selling these businesses. Josh, what's your.
There has to be demand otherwise you don't have a bill for sure.
No, it's huge, and I mean, look at how well ford Pro has done with that unit. It's just unbelievable to growth. But what's your exit? I mean, are you looking at IPO this company? Will you sell it to a bigger company? How do you get Mark Cuban is money out?
Yes?
I mean right now we're really just focused on execution. We're having an amazing year, thank god, and we're really seeing fleets come to us and say, hey, we want to get going a lot quicker. We don't want to wait, and so we're having an amazing year. I think for us, the right exit will present itself, but right now we're focused on scale. We're focused on making sure our customers are happy. And making sure that we're onboarding a new fleet.
Keep in mind, because we're not waiting on the grid to catch up, because we're able to service these fleets. We're almost onboarding a new fleet every week. So you know, while we don't come out there and say it, we're probably one of the fastest growing ev charging networks out there as well.
Wait execution, no offense. It's a pet pee for me when an executive says execution, I don't know what that means. It's like everybody dumps things into that way.
We want to grow their business, you know, and they don't want.
To tell you what their exit is, so tell us, I mean, what does that mean? What do you need to do? What do you need to hit what targets in order to really be successful and sustainable longer term?
Absolutely so for us, success is making sure that when we get a fleet operational, we're getting them operational to where they can actually grow their fleet. A lot of times fleets will come to us and they'll say, hey, I'm starting out with ten cars, but my goal is to get to one hundred cars and the grid can't keep up with that growth. Plus the time to install is going to take me three to five years at
that number of vehicles. So for us, execution means, hey, get this fleet up and running in three to seven days, get them fully electrified. And then now that they're fully electrified and they want to grow their fleet, let's grow with them. Let's allow them to go from ten vehicles to twenty twenty to fifty to fifty to one hundred and see long term growth with that fleet partner over a number of years as they continue to grow and operate.
And because we're getting them up and running quicker, we want them to see a better ROI than if they had to wait on infrastructure to catch up.
All right, So we're speaking right now with Josh Aviv. He's the founder and CEO of Spark Charge. If you're just joining us out of Massachusetts, and I know that you're focused on the proit commercial fleets, but you must also love cars. I've been in a ton of evs lately. I was in a Chevy Blazer ev SS. I was in a Dodge Charger Daytona scat Pack, which I loved. Right now I'm in a Cadillac Vistic, which I'm also just really positively surprised by. What do you, what do
you drive? What's your d D Josh?
I drive a twenty twenty six Cadillac Vistic.
The Vistic is pretty sick, isn't it. I was truly oppressed by this vehicle.
Love it.
I didn't love the Escalade IQ as much, which is the bigger ev It's it's a it's a giant It's like a giant house on wheels. But the Vistick is relatively snappy for a car that can still hold like seven people. What do you do for your for your charging when you're on the road, when you're going around, you know, to make work trips and you can't just be charging at home every night. What's your experience been with the US consumer Charging network?
Yeah, so I'd say, you know, when it comes to road trips and things like that. One of the things that I love about the Vistick it's got I think, you know, real world mileage roughly around three hundred and thirty miles of range, and so I've been able to go from basically Boston down to New Jersey and almost all the way back on a single charge.
I'm without having to stop, and I love it. I love it. I love the Super crews on it.
It's it's a it's probably, in my opinion, one of the best EV's I've driven, and I I've owned I think close to ten EV's in my lifetime.
So love that car. I think when it comes.
To you know, travel charging, you know I've typically used the Tesla Supercharger network or Electrify America, any of your standard EV charging networks.
So what what do you make of the state of kind of evs in America under this administration which seems to have been pulling back.
There's a lot of backlash. It seems like YEP sales slows down. But is there any doubt in your mind, Josh, that we're all driving EV's in ten years.
There's no doubt in my mind. I think.
Look, I think what it's going to come down to is the economics of owning an EV Right. I think that's really and I think that probably should have been the focal point from day one. Right, Look how much money you're gonna save when you're charging at home.
Right.
Look at the time save not having to go to the gas station. Right, Look at the experience of just being able to plug in when you pull in to your driveway. Right, I think that is really going to come down to it. And if you think about it, the low cost of maintenance. Right, I can't remember the last time I went to a mechanic for an oil change. I can't remember the last time I went to a mechanic because.
The engine light came on. I didn't know what that meant. Right.
The low cost of ownership for an electric vehicle is ultimately going to push more people to own electric vehicles. And I think that is why in the next ten years we are all going to be driving evs. Is because they're going to save so much money to the consumer.
Carol will switch when they drive themselves. She wants her own personal Weimo at her house in Jersey City.
I do love Weimo, but I do like EV. I do like the idea of EV's. I don't want to, you know, I'm going to learn about the environment. Hey, Josh, stay in touch. Josh a Vive, founder in ce of Spark Charge joining us from Massachusea.
You got to get him on my podcast now, Hot Pursuit with Hannah Elliott.
No, yes you could. Yeah, we'll share. We'll share